About our Comprehensive Cancer Center
Treatment of cancer of the gastrointestinal system has become very successful in the 21st century.
The essential reason for this success is the manner in which physicians of different disciplines, such as surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, and radiology, combine their expertise to plan and execute a treatment plan.
This plan is initiated in a Multidisciplinary Tumor Board where each patient is discussed in detail by each of these specialists and a roadmap of care is created.
Each roadmap is unique to the patient being discussed and involves risk assessment of treatment strategies that are unique to the condition of the patient, their psychosocial needs, and their other existing diseases.
What may be optimal surgery for a 55-year-old golfer may not be the same for a 90-year-old nursing home patient with the same stage colon cancer.
We take pride in presenting every patient whom we are asked to treat at such a conference and assisting the patient and his or her family in arriving at a realistic plan that optimizes the chance of cure, ensuring the patient’s longest possible meaningful survival, while minimizing their pain and suffering.
This is true Comprehensive Cancer Care.
To talk with one of our patients who has experienced one of the following conditions or procedures, please call our office at 516-627-5262.
Cancer of the Colon & Rectum
- We offer true minimally invasive colorectal cancer surgery.
- This is laparoscopic removal of cancers without placing our hands inside the body.
- Patients eat on the day of surgery and usually go home within 3 days of surgery.
Cancer of the Esophagus and Stomach
- We began performing Minimally Invasive Esophagectomies in 2005 and Laparoscopic Gastrectomies for stomach cancer in 2008 and have successfully treated hundreds of patients without any abdominal incisions long before major national cancer centers believed it was a feasible approach to these diseases.
- Minimally invasive Esophagectomy is now the new gold standard for treatment of esophageal cancer throughout the world, and we have hundreds of successfully treated patients.
Pancreatic Cancer
- There are numerous types of pancreas cancers and ‘pre-cancers.’
- Not all are fatal.
- Early detection is essential and appropriate treatment decisions are the key to proper care.
- We take pride in having the best oncologic gastroenterologists involved in the evaluation and planning of care in this complex set of diseases.
- We take pride in our pancreas program, which includes a strategic planning group of patients with complex pancreatic cystic tumors.
Pancreatic Cysts
- The most common dilemma facing pancreatic surgeons and gastroenterologists today is the incidental finding of a pancreatic cyst in a patient who underwent a CAT scan or MRI for another reason.
- By far the most cysts picked up this way are benign and will never become malignant.
- A small minority is predicted to eventually transform into cancers and should be removed while most can be monitored and may never require surgery.
- Pancreatic cysts are categorized as either universally benign Serous Cysts or potentially malignant Mucinous Cysts, of which there are main duct and side branch variants called Intraductal Mucinous Cystic Neoplasms (IPMN).
- Our Pancreatic Group evaluates each patient who is diagnosed with a pancreatic cystic lesion and determines a numeric risk of developing cancer, presenting the patient with a standardized risk evaluation.
- This detailed analysis of patient-cyst characteristics is presented to the patient so as to help him or her arrive at a ‘real world’ plan that may include observation or surgery based upon the characteristics of the fluid retrieved at biopsy in a minimally invasive way under ultrasound localization through a camera placed in the stomach (endoscopic ultrasound).
Liver, Gallbladder and Bile Duct Cancer
- Our Hepatobiliary Team has treated cancers of the liver and bile ducts successfully over the past 20 years.
- Our expertise includes laparoscopic liver resection, ablation of unresectable tumors of the liver, both primary and secondary, from other sites as well as radical liver resections when feasible.
- We have a multidisciplinary conference that focuses on optimizing treatment planning. This includes individualized strategies for specific conditions that occur in cirrhotic patients, patients with metastatic cancers to the liver, and primary liver cancers.
- Our treatment modalities include surgery or combinations of embolization with chemotherapeutic drugs, radioactive seeds, or bland particles to cut off the blood supply in order to kill liver tumors.
Bile Duct Injuries
- One of the most problematic conditions today is the injured bile duct that occurs during cholecystectomy (removal of the gallbladder).
- Although this was common in the early 1990s when laparoscopic cholecystectomy was in its infancy, we still see many patients who have had recent and remote bile duct injuries.
- The patients that we see today have had multiple surgeries and attempts at fixing this problem and come to us as a last resort.
- As a result we have accumulated one of the largest series in the world of documented bile duct injuries that have been treated by a surgical reconstruction of the bile duct with near 100% permanent resolution.
- We have performed surgery on some patients who have undergone 3 or more surgeries to correct this complex problem with outstanding results.
- We have developed instrumentation that optimizes the success of this reconstruction.